£140 Billion. The Real Cost of Britain's Failed Families

"Happy marriages build healthy families and healthy families build a healthy society." That was the central contention of a speech given by the Rt Hon Iain Duncan Smith MP this week at a conference at the Centre for Social Justice -- of which he was the founder.

In his short speech Duncan Smith laid out five main areas of family concern: family breakdown, the stability of marriage, the impact of family breakdown on children, family breakdown and the early years of childhood and family law: every family matters.

His choice of this last phrase, with clear reference to the US version of "Every Child Counts," became the theme for a professional speech.

Using some glaringly harsh statistics from a range of sources -- 7% of children are born with no biological father named on their birth certificate -- and citing opinion polls and European benchmarks he painted a dismal picture of British society.

He chose to tackle head-on the view that "Every family Matters" might be a case of left versus right in the political sense. One side declaring marriage to be an optional extra and the other citing a moral justification for marriage. Speaking persuasively, he argued that instead policy makers should look at what works. Not be hide-bound by crude political viewpoints. To help he identified some useful analogies from Australia.

With his 13 proposals for legal action he might have bitten off more than he could handle in one speech. How many of his audience could recall 13 of them at the end?

But the 13 proposals were all outlined and became the cue for his conclusion. This noted that the annual cost of family law inaction stood at a staggering £140 billion (£20 billion cost of family breakdown, £60 billion cost of crime, £40 billion cost of alcohol/ drug abuse and £20 billion cost of education failure). A huge cost. And one that taxpayers can not afford to ignore simply to score cheap political points.

Some good points, well made. Does he have broad political support? That's another discussion for Parliament, but with a £140 billion bill on the table he's got some attention.


Peter Bowler is webmaster at Time to Market – a specialist provider of presentation skills training throughout the UK.

Get a free ebook, The 'Art of Presentation', when you sign up for 'Telling it Straight', the presentation training course newsletter that answers more of your presentation questions.